The city’s heritage archives and libraries are an essential instrument for keeping the collective memory alive. Despite this common goal, however, they are very diverse in terms of the origins and the characteristics of the documentation they conserve.

Some safeguard old documents relative to the history of the city as a whole, others specialise in photographic documentation, and some belong to private entities or institutions that have played a key role in the history of Barcelona.

Currently, from the Observatori de Dades Culturals de Barcelona (Barcelona Cultural Data Observatory), alongside the leading players involved, we have begun a process whereby we revise the data gathered from all these facilities with the aim of offering a broader and more comprehensive perspective of the sector.

Firstly we are assessing which indicators are the most suitable for describing and analysing the role that these centres play, and secondly we are intending to expand the number of centres that we have data for, as we currently only include a fraction of those that exist in the city.

In the meantime, we invite you to visit the search engine of the Map of Facilities in Catalonia where you’ll find a full list of the city’s archives and libraries.